Treatment by Authorities and SocietyДЄccording to Australia's DFAT report, 'since the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sikhs have lived peacefully in India and the majority of Sikhs do not experience societal discrimination or violence' (Australia 17 Oct. Security forces carried out further operations to suppress Sikh separatism during the late 1980s, during which allegations emerged of torture, extrajudicial killings and deaths in custody carried out by security forces. Approximately 3,000 people, mostly Sikhs, were killed in the violence. In the days that followed, mobs seeking revenge for the assassination attacked Sikh homes and businesses, including in New Delhi. вЂ¦ In retaliation for Operation Blue Star, two of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards assassinated her at her home in New Delhi in October 1984. Bhindranwale and many of his supporters were killed during the operation. The army bombarded the Golden Temple complex, inflicting serious damage. In June 1984 he Indian government ordered the army to eject Bhindranwale and his followers from the complex in an offensive known as 'Operation Blue Star'.

In the same response, it was also noted that 'ommunities of Sikhs in other states may be ethnically homogenous such as Sikligar Sikhs or Assamese Sikhs' (WSO and Associate Professor ).ДЄccording to the US Department of State's International Religious Freedom Report for 2018, Indian federal law provides minority community status to Sikhs, which allows access to government assistance programs, while legislation refers to Sikhs under the same category as Hindus (US 21 June 2019, 6).ДЄustralia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) country information report on India provides an historical overview of key events of Sikh separatism:Дuring an internal struggle within the Sikh community in 1982, separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers moved into the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar.

According to a joint response provided to the Research Directorate by a representative of the World Sikh Organization (WSO) of Canada and an associate professor of Indian religions at Carleton University, India has 'several urban centres with sizable Sikh communities,' such as Delhi and Udham Singh Nagar in the state of Uttarakhand, and 'lmost every major Indian city has a Sikh community,' with large communities in the states that border Punjab, such as Jammu, Rajasthan, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh (WSO and Associate Professor ). Uttar Pradesh and the National Capital Territory of Delhi have Sikh populations of 643,500 and 570,581, respectively (India 2011). The 2011 census indicates that Sikhs reside in every Indian state, with the majority residing in Punjab (approximately 16 million persons), and significant populations in neighbouring Haryana (1.2 million) and Rajasthan (872,930) (India 2011). Overview of Demographics and Historical BackgroundДЄccording to the 2011 census, India's most recent census (World Population Review ), Sikhs constitute approximately 1.7 percent of the Indian population, or 20,833,116 persons among India's total population of approximately 1.21 billion (India 2011).

Sikh population in world 2018